VOGONS


First post, by evoportals

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I don't understand all the hate for the Nvidia FX series. The FX5600 and FX5900 are both fantastic cards for Windows 98. After hours of research the only faults the cards really had were bad anisotropic filtering at the "high performance" mode setting which nobody ever used anyway. The "performance" and "quality" anisotropic filtering modes were equality as good as ATI's. Sub-par DirectX 9 performance, but again, it's irrelevant since nobody ran anything DirectX9 in Windows 98 back in the day. The FX series had equality as powerful DirectX 8 performance as ATI.

I think the real gems here are the FX5600 and FX5600 Ultra. Both support fog table and 8bit textures. Unlike the FX5700, both these cards can use the "more retro game compatible" 45.23 driver. The FX5600 models run cooler and use less power than the Geforce 4 TI series and have superior AA and filtering. My entire system running an Athlon 64 3200 socket 754 "Venice" cpu, 512mb ram, SSD, and FX5600 uses only 50 watts from the wall at idle, and 90 watts when running 3Dmark2001 and that is with a crappy PSU with an 80% efficiency rating. Calculating it, all the components only use 40 watts at idle and 72 watts running 3Dmark2001.

I highly recommend the FX5600 and ultra version for Windows 98 and games up until around 2002.

Reply 1 of 97, by SmokyWhisky

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I remember the FX card a friend of mine bought back when the FX series was the latest thing out from Nvidia had a terrible, very loud cooling system compared to my GF4Ti. I don't know if this problem affected all of the high-end cards from all manufacturers though in this series though.

Reply 2 of 97, by retardware

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Most of my Quadro XGLs died because of the fan getting weaker and weaker, finally stopping.
Opening and lubing the fan sucks, and the heat damage the GPU takes from bad cooling is permanent, speeds up its eventual demise.

Many other FX and Quadros died because of that idiotic cooler mounting, which makes it easy to unnoticedly loosen the cooler and breaking the cooling paste/pad connection, with the GPU getting killed in consequence.

For this I have changed to passive graphics cards with big coolers, which are well-mounted, don't break off easily.

Reply 3 of 97, by Unknown_K

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Probably because ATI's 9600/9700/9800 cards were better single slot and quiet (for the top end dust buster FX).

The common FX5200 and 5500 were crappy.

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Reply 4 of 97, by leileilol

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There's that really really really really slow shader model 2 and GLSL, there's that launch model that sounded like a dustbuster, and there's also that 3dmark2003 "benchmark driver" controversy with certain big hardware news sites. This all also came at a time during nvidia's new "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" slogan which adds a dash of arrogance on top of that. nVidia pretty much Pentium 4'd here. 2002-2003 was not a good time for nVidia.

Probably the only definite good thing to say about the FX series is the image quality for both VGA and TV-out (compared to previous Geforce cards) and there's an abundance of them and they "work". Despite the FX name as a nod to 3dfx, the 3dfx collectorholio baggage doesn't apply here.

Also even among the sea of FX5200s you have to be specific for them. Don't go for the DVI or passively-cooled 64-bit ones.

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Reply 5 of 97, by BinaryDemon

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At the time I didnt feel the FX5600 or FX5800 cards offered a significant value over the high end Geforce4 cards.

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Reply 6 of 97, by appiah4

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The FX5800Ultra disaster
Ensuing nVidia hubris and benchmark cheating
Poor DX9 and pixel shader performance
Poor price/performance compared to ATI R300 series

At the time there was absolutely no point in getting the FX series cards. There still is not from my point of view.

(Maybe I should sell this, I keep it just because of how awful it is, and because it's a novelty collector's item..)

ASUS-AGP-V9900-FX5800-Ultra.jpg

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Reply 7 of 97, by The Serpent Rider

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The FX series had equality as powerful DirectX 8 performance as ATI.

They didn't. Even shader model 1.4 was mildly slower, especially with AA, due to how FX were designed. R300+ pipeline was overall more flexible.

it's irrelevant since nobody ran anything DirectX9 in Windows 98 back in the day

Win 9x was not relevant in 2003.

Last edited by The Serpent Rider on 2019-02-12, 18:03. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 8 of 97, by firage

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They don't deserve hate at this point, they have pros and cons for a late Win9x build. They were a big letdown for the brand at the time, just as ATI had pushed onto the forefront with the 9700 Pro, and future DX9 performance was a major selling point as those games were starting to come out.

Last edited by firage on 2019-02-12, 18:10. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 9 of 97, by The Serpent Rider

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Ther're much better for the old stuff. That's why GFX is more appreciated right now.

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Reply 10 of 97, by SPBHM

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evoportals wrote:

I highly recommend the FX5600 and ultra version for Windows 98 and games up until around 2002.

that's the problem they were on the market in 2003-2004 when windows 98 was already considered obsolete and DX9 games started to appear,
when you have a title like Half Life 2 which forces you to use DX8 because shader 2.0 is too slow on it, while any 9500 can play it fine with DX9 you knew it was bad at it.

not to mention the bad FX 5800 launch, failed to impress against the Radeons, and was much louder back when loud graphics cards were not common.

for retro gaming now, sure they are fine, if you look at them as enhanced Geforce 3/4 TIs they are quite good

Reply 11 of 97, by XTac

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I don't think anyone hates them now. They found their niche in win9x gaming, have the benefit of (likely) better image quality and just being slightly newer. At the time however, the hate was pretty much deserved - they just didn't hold up for purposes they were marketed for.

Still, even now I see little point of going with FX cards. GeForce 4 Ti series offers similar performance, while allowing you to use older drivers.

Reply 12 of 97, by rasz_pl

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evoportals wrote:

I don't understand all the hate for the Nvidia FX series.

let me guess, you weren't around/into computers at the time of FX release? 😀 🙁

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Reply 13 of 97, by leileilol

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The Serpent Rider wrote:

Win 9x was not relevant in 2003.

There have been many 9x holdovers in the mainstream until around 2006 (when extended support ended) that didn't agree with the XP marketing schemes, activiation drama, and compatibility loss that were happening. Many new games still supported Win9x well after 2003 and so did many video cards.

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Reply 14 of 97, by W Gruffydd

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Performance wise, the FX series was a notable loss by Nvidia to ATI in the graphics card wars, for reasons already mentioned. Heaping praise on the FX line due to its unexpected, ex post facto retro ability must always be accompanied by this caveat, lest history be rewritten.

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Reply 15 of 97, by KT7AGuy

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I have a system that I use with an FX 5950 Ultra:

ABIT KT7A v1.3
Athlon 2100+
512MB PC133 RAM
SB AWE64 Gold
Win98SE

When I first benchmarked the 5950 Ultra against my GF4 Ti4600 I was shocked. The 5950 Ultra benchmarked the same as, or slightly worse, than the GF4 Ti4600 on this system. The only advantage the FX card offers is better FSAA and image quality at the slight expense of compatibility with older drivers.

GF4 cards are the best, cheapest, and most stable cards for late-era Win9x builds.

I'm currently repurposing an Athlon 64 3700+ S754 system for late-era Win9x duty. I have a Quadro FX3000 (aka FX 5900 Ultra) card for it that I'll compare against a GF4 Ti4600 when it's complete. I'll post my results here. It should be interesting.

Reply 17 of 97, by 386SX

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rasz_pl wrote:
evoportals wrote:

I don't understand all the hate for the Nvidia FX series.

let me guess, you weren't around/into computers at the time of FX release? 😀 🙁

From my point of view the feelings about the FX (specifically the 5800 Ultra, not the later cards) weren't good cause the expectations were imho really really high considering also the previous cards and their experience! Do anyone remember those sort of movies-like trailers before the launch?

Reply 18 of 97, by Weebob

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The whole "Dustbuster" thing aside the Geforce FX series was a misaligned release, not helped by ATI knocking it out of the park. Loads of vids on-line explaining the 16bit registers that really hampered their performance.

I remember reading somewhere that some ex-3dfx staffers worked on the Geforce FX (no idea if true), I was chomping at the bit to get my hands on one. Ended up with a 5200 ultra and was massively disappointed coming from a Geforce 4 4200.

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Reply 19 of 97, by oeuvre

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I thought the FX5200 was a good card back in the day cause it just played all the games I wanted it to better than whatever TNT2 Riva I had before.

HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
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